Mike Urbonas – Product Marketing/Personal Branding/Business Intelligence Blog

I don’t know what recently reminded me of the classic 80′s comedy film Back to School, starring the one and only Rodney Dangerfield, but it occurred to me the business class attended by self-made millionare Thornton Melon (played by Rodney Dangerfield), led by the stereotypically stuffy Dr. Phillip Barbay (Paxton Whitehead), is a humorous example of an anti-product management, anti-product marketing class.

The particular piece of this funny scene I had in mind occurs early in the YouTube snippet below: Shortly after Dr. Barbay begins a lesson about the creation of a manufacturing company, Melon asks, “What’s the product [we will be making]?” After a few failed attempts to dismiss the question, an exasperated Dr. Barbay finally insists the specific product they will make “doesn’t matter” – absolute heresy for any self-respecting product marketer or product manager!  Of course, the entire snippet is well worth watching.

On the contrary, the idea, the answer to “What’s the product?” is, of course, everything to the company’s success. More on this topic soon.

Earlier this year Barbara led a thought-provoking webinar that asked the question, Why are there so few Great Product Managers?  Rymatech has a recording of this webinar on their very useful Product Management View website. 

In preparing for her webinar, Barbara Tallent interviewed six CEOs on a confidential basis to get their perspective on why there are so few great product managers. Much to her chagrin as a former product marketing manager, these CEOs were fairly jaded about the product marketing function: “I’ve never really worked with a great product manager,” one CEO told Barbara (and to think that CEO had worked with Barbara earlier in his career!). Others drolly mused, “Why aren’t there any great product managers?”

Another product manager turned CEO readily agreed that product marketing is “a really tough job,” for a number of reasons:

• The CEO, VP Development, VP Sales and sales team, etc. all see small portions of the overall product marketing job and assume what they see is all the product marketer does.
• Very few metrics – not all product marketers are judged based on sales success
• Risk of being the “fall guy” – product marketers and managers might be blamed if some issues with the product and/or sales levels come up; going back to the familiar refrain that the PM/PMM has all the responsibility and none of the line authority.

OK, now here’s the good news: There is ample reward to go with the above risk. CEOs also viewed product marketing and management as a key source of future company leadership.

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Source: Tamar Weinberg (Flickr CC), self-proclaimed Schwag (Swag) Addict.

Note: I categorized this post as product marketing, but this really falls under marketing communications… oh well… Also, to experience the full dry, wannabe-comedic effect of this post, imagine Andy Rooney is reading this post to you.

The quality of a trade show is highly inverse to the number of tschotske hunters trolling for swag.  I’ve manned trade shows where I basically spent the day “feeding the bears” (with tschotskes).  My former employer wisely chose not to return to that show.

I also recall another tradeshow, held in the same venue for two years in a row, in which a local fellow, making the most of his free exhibit hall pass, showed up both years explaining he collected ball point pens as a hobby and whether my company giving any away.  Sorry, no pens here, for either year. I am grateful that the two higher ed technology conferences I just returned from were the polar opposite of those mulligan events and highly worthwhile!

Still, whether you call them tschotskes, trash and trinkets, giveaways or swag, you want to give your visitors something at trade shows.  Ideally, you want your tschotske to be something of interest and useful, such that they want to keep it for a long time, and ideally of some direct relevance to your company.  Touring the booths at a recent conference, I came across a number of interesting tschotskes:

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